Posted by Pedro Arizti, Jim Brumby, Nick Manning, Theo Thomas and Roby Senderowistch (all World Bank)
We would like to draw your attention to the recent publication by the World Bank of the book Results, Performance Budgeting and Trust in Government that will be officially launched this Monday, October 4, 2010 at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
As the book Results, Performance Budgeting and Trust in Government highlights, there are many ways to consider strengthening results and improving performance in the public sector. This book looks through two lenses. The first is the adoption of budgeting arrangements that promote performance and high quality public services. Performance budgeting brings a focus on the results that are being delivered for resources provided, rather than just how much money is being spent, and aims to strengthen resource allocation, effectiveness, efficiency and accountability. The second lens is the relationship between the government's performance in delivering key services and the trust that citizens and firms have in government.
The book follows from a conference on performance budgeting held in Mexico in June 2008 where a large range of experiences from Latin America and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries was presented. It draws out lessons in designing and implementing performance budgeting, with an emphasis on performance-informed budgeting (PIB)—the most common category of performance budgeting adopted to date. The discussion explores the most recent experience in PIB reforms, introduces new perspectives on issues such as performance agreements, and provides guidance on PIB implementation. In doing so, it has a strong focus on the challenges and the variety of approaches taken to meet these challenges, with the aim of providing useful information to countries wishing to improve elements of their performance budgeting.
Trends, patterns and drivers of trust in government are examined for countries in Latin America and OECD. Performance budgeting, as a reform aiming to improve government performance, is a potential tool to help increase public trust in government and so strengthen citizens’ voluntary tax compliance, adherence to the law, private investment and political participation. This in turn could support the creation of a virtuous circle between government performance, trust in government and willingness to pay taxes. The book explores the prospects and challenges in Latin American and other emerging economies for building trust in government through better delivery of public services.
The book includes both analysis and observations written by staff at the World Bank, and conference papers by different authors—mainly senior practitioners in the field—providing relevant case studies from different countries.
Please visit the following link to access the text of the book: www.worldbank.org/bookperformancebudgeting
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